The blurb gets me interested at first and seeing that it has quite a high average rating in Goodreads gets me a bit anticipated too. The plot brought me to a story of Charley Sutherland, a young scholar who has an ability to summon a literary character out from a book when he gets too immersed in a reading. One night while writing an article on Dickens, Charley accidentally let Uriah Heep out from David Copperfield novel. A terrible incident came thereafter when a group of literary characters started to cause trouble throughout the city and threatening to destroy the world. Charley learned that he was not the only one with the ability and now, together with his brother, Rob, he needs to stop them before the world could reach to The End.

“If I just concentrate very hard on the character or object, their role on the book, their purpose or meaning or textual composition, they can come out.”

Inventive and enthralling plot that was narrated through layers of perspectives; bit complicated and twisty but the adventure part was both thrilling and intriguing for me that I enjoyed the intricate-ness of how the development goes despite those lengthy conversation and sort of few draggy and unnecessary scenes. Not really a fan to both Charley and Rob’s relationship (but I love their dynamics especially throughout the end) as it gets quite tedious to follow on their bickerings and clashes of ideas— too dramatic for me to endure.

The secondary characters were so vibrant and engrossingly crafted especially those fictionals; the 5 Darcys (all were pulled out at different chapters from the book so all been having different personalities), Millie (the only fictional that was not based on a real literature), Dorian Gray, Heathcliff, Holmes and few more ‘victorian’ characters that I think if you’re a fan to classic literature this book would probably a must read for you.

That littlest gap of fiction and reality backdrops were alluring, and I like how most fictionals in this plot don’t fancy their characters in the books and crave to choose their own after having a chance to sprang off the page. “Putting them back hurts, sometimes. They have rights as well, fictional or not.”

So witty and clever with insightful commentary towards the power of fiction, on the importance of family, about trust and a mind-bending exploration for bibliophiles; to Dickens fans, especially. Would go for 3.7 stars to this.